For my dad for helping me

          Table of contents

                            1……… The Precambrian

                            2……… The Paleozoic

                            3…….... The Mesozoic

                            4……… The Cenozoic

Credits

Idea: Nicolas

Author: Nicolas

Art: Nicolas

Editor: My dad

Publisher: Storyjumper.com

Inspiration from;

- Dinosaurs: a Visual Encyclopedia: Copyright Dorling Kindersley Limited 

- Where on Earth? Dinosaurs and other Prehistoric Life: Written by Chris Barker and Darren Naish"

~ About the author ~

    My name is Nicolas Lau. I am in fourth grade. I am nine years old. My favorite thing is dinosaurs and my favorite dinosaur is Triceratops. I hope you enjoy this book.

Triceratops

The Precambrian

                                Earth’s formation

    It is 4.6 BYA (Billion years ago). Asteroids bombarded earth. If humans were there, they would be vaporized. All there were was an ocean of lava and dozens of volcanoes that would later form 

the continents. Then, a huge planetoid named Theia smashed into earth and ripped off huge chunks of rock out of earth. These rocks later formed the moon. The earth formed fast; It took 10-20 million years. That's not a lot compared to the geological time scale.

                                            Life

    The first life forms evolved 3.8 billion years ago. There were some ordinary cells that formed stromatolites. Stromatolites are mounds of bacteria that produce oxygen. 3 billion years later, the first multicellular organisms evolved. Many of the fossils (bones) were found in the Ediacaran hills in Australia by Red Sprigg (One of the animals- Sprigginia- was named after him…!). 

    Most of the asteroids that hit earth had crystals with water in them. After the asteroids hit, they released the water. All water on earth is billions of years old!

How water was made

The Paleozoic

Main info

    The Paleozoic was full of evolution. The first vertebrates evolved in the Cambrian. Trilobites roamed the seas (before getting eaten by fish-but that’s a story for another time.) and the first land animals evolved. The first trees appeared. Dramatic change happened when ALL continents collided, and this formed Pangea. 3 extinctions happened: The Ordovician one (Climate change), The Devonian one (Asteroid impact-It’s a theory), and the Great Dying ( The Permian one- 96% of all life forms went extinct all because of massive volcanic eruptions. Crazy!).

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A Dimetrodon (below) is taking a nap (For some strange reason)

                                    Life

    Many new life forms appeared (None of the animals from the Paleozoic were dinosaurs). Life was very abundant. All ancestors of every, and I mean every, modern life forms evolved. The first animals on land evolved. Synapsids like Dimetrodon and reptiles like Hylomonus evolved. In the Carboniferous, there were huge bugs.

The Great Dying

    Unfortunately, 96% of all life on earth went extinct in a massive catastrophe called the Great Dying. Whole groups disappeared. Many animals, like the Trilobites and the Gorgonopsids (Big mammal-related meat eaters) vanished from the face of the earth. Very few animals survived.

Gorgonopsids (right) flee

from a volcano in

Siberia.